PXLtools — Tool guide

OBJ Exporter — batch OBJ export

Select a group, choose a folder, hit Export. OBJ Exporter walks the children of a selected group and writes each one out as its own .obj — with control over groups, polygon groups, materials, smoothing and normals — with a live progress bar and ETA. Built for breaking a master model into hundreds of individual pieces in one pass.

Maya v1.2.0

The interface

Overview

OBJ Exporter batch-exports the children of a selected Maya group, writing each object to its own .obj file in a folder you choose. You control exactly what goes into the files — groups, polygon groups, materials, smoothing and normals — and a progress bar with a live ETA tracks the run.

It is built for the moment you have one master model made of many pieces and need each piece out as a separate OBJ — tens or hundreds — without exporting them by hand. It shares the same UI kit as the rest of PXLtools and auto-updates from GitHub on launch.

Requirements

Autodesk Maya 2025
The OBJ export plugin (objExport) — ships with Maya; enable it if Maya prompts
Python 3

Maya 2025 already includes PySide6. You do not install it, you do not pip anything, you do not touch your Python environment.

Availability

OBJ Exporter is part of Cristian's PXLtools production toolkit and isn't publicly downloadable yet. The TurnTable tool is the first public PXLtools release; the rest of the suite is rolling out gradually. Want early access, or to be notified when it ships? Get in touch.

Using OBJ Exporter

Select a group, set your options, choose a folder, and export.

OBJ Exporter interface: Export Options checkboxes (Groups, Polygon Groups, Materials, Smoothing, Normals) with a Select / Deselect All button, an Export Folder with a Browse button, a Progress section, and a large Export button — OBJ Exporter — the full interface

How the gated steps work

Green — done

A completed step turns green with a check. Click its header again any time to reopen and change it.

Orange — do this next

The active step is highlighted orange — that is the button to press now.

Grey — locked

Later steps stay greyed out and their buttons disabled until the step(s) they depend on are done.

Select a group in Maya. Pick the group whose children you want exported as individual OBJ files.
Set the export options. Tick what each OBJ should carry — Groups, Polygon Groups, Materials, Smoothing, Normals — or use Select / Deselect All to toggle them together.
Choose the export folder. Press Browse… and pick the destination. The path appears in the field and the status line confirms you are ready.
Export. Press Export. The progress bar and ETA track each object; the status line reports how many were written when it finishes, and your original selection is restored.

Tip: Each child of the group becomes one .obj named after the object — so a cleanly named hierarchy gives you a cleanly named export set.

Troubleshooting

"Please select an export folder first."

Press Browse… and choose a destination folder before exporting.

"No group selected" / "No objects found in the selected group."

Select a group in Maya that contains the objects you want exported. The tool exports the children of the selected group.

Can I stop a run partway through?

No — once an export starts it runs to completion. For very large sets, test on a small group first to confirm your options.

Some objects failed but others exported.

Per-object failures are logged to the Maya Script Editor and the batch continues. The final status shows how many of the total succeeded; check the Script Editor for the specific objects.